Captured By The Dragon
Episode 54

Patara

Dylan left through my window when the sun started to come out. He swore he would be close by if I needed him—and that made me feel only slightly better about what I was about to do.

My bag was packed, gone with Dylan out the window. I left behind all the pieces of her that were forced upon me. All the clothes she wanted me to wear so I could be her perfect daughter. All the hobbies she made me take even when I knew I hated them.

It wasn’t me any longer. She couldn’t force me to be what I wasn’t—not anymore. I dressed in comfortable pants and a sweater with my hair in a high ponytail and didn’t care if she would think I looked homeless just because I wasn’t wearing a dress of her choosing. She was done controlling me.

I knew she was always the first to rise. I knew her schedule better than anyone else. I remembered all the nights I would listen to her steps as she moved through the house and prayed she would let me stay in bed instead of forcing me out of it.

I waited down in the back area of the house where she took her coffee and looked out the large windows into the garden that she paid a lot of money for.

I sat in her favorite chair and listened as she moved through the house. First in her bathroom, then down the stairs to the kitchen. Every minute made my stomach turn with anxiety. I didn’t want to wake the house with this, but I knew it was possible and there was no going back now.

My mother halted at the door when she saw me. Her steaming cup of coffee was halfway to her lips and suddenly it was forgotten.

“What are you doing up? I thought your lazy self would still be asleep til noon.” She scoffed and glanced at the chair. “You know I sit there. Get up.”

It was strange how much I used to accept from her. All the rude demands and talking down she did to her child that did nothing to her. I wondered why she even looked for me when I was gone… other than the fact that it might have embarrassed her to have other people find out what happened to me.

“I know what you did to my baby, mother.” I said calmly, evenly.

Her brows raised high on her forehead. She took a step further into the room and set down her cup. “Excuse me? What do you think you’re saying to me?”

Her brows raised high on her forehead. She took a step further into the room and set down her cup. “Excuse me? What do you think you’re saying to me?”

“You don’t have to pretend anymore. You don’t have to act like you don’t know anything when you were the one that told the hospital to get rid of him.”

“How dare you!” She raised her voice to a tone that I used to cower away from. Instead, I stood from the chair. “Who filled your head with these horrible lies?”

“Are you still going to deny it? I knew it the moment I saw your face at the hospital that something wasn’t right! I didn’t want to think that my mother would be capable of doing this to her own daughter—“

“You should thank me!” She roared. “You should thank me for getting rid of it and any trace that that thing was ever yours!”

I was speechless, no words would form as I parted my lips.

“I told you that you should have gotten an abortion. I told you that you would ruin the life I had made for you if you kept that—monster! I knew you wouldn’t know how to care for the thing. I knew that you would spend every night of the rest of your life regretting what you did!”

“You… tell me what you did. Admit it to me, you owe me that. Where did you send him?”

My mother laughed bitterly. It made my skin crawl just hearing it. “I don’t know where they sent him. They said he would go somewhere that wanted him, but I didn’t care if he went straight to the trash and you shouldn’t either.”

“How could you say something like that! Like it or not, he is a part of you too!”

“You have truly lost your mind if you think that thing is a part of me. It will never be apart of this family and one day you will thank me for what I did.”

I wanted to slap her. I wanted to scream at her and tell her how horrible she was my entire life but—I couldn’t bring myself to raise my hand to her. Even after all that she had done.

“I’m going to get my baby back. I will do anything to get him back, even blast our family all over the news to get word out that I’m looking for him.” I said evenly. The threat hit her instantly, I could see it on her face.

“You wouldn’t dare.” She said in a whisper.

I lifted my chin in a challenge. For so long I had cowered away from her. I wanted to be her perfect angel, I wanted her to be proud of me and to love me. Only now, I realized that she never loved me. She loved what she made me.

She didn’t love who I was. She didn’t like when I cried, she never comforted me like a mother should. She didn’t like when I failed, she shunned me until I did good. She wanted me to be a trophy that she could show all of her rich friends. She wanted me to be a version of herself that she never got to be when she was my age.

When I was taken, that image of me was broken forever and she tried so desperately to glue back all of the pieces—but I was already gone. Even when I tried to be what I was, I wasn’t that girl anymore. She died in that tunnel when the greasy man took me away and had me sold to a horrible world.

“I would do anything for him. I don’t care what people think of me. Perhaps it’s time you start caring less what others think too.”

“If you bring our family name into it, I will let them know that you are no longer my daughter.” She said.

The words hit like a blow to my chest. I took a step back and stared at her with wide eyes.

“You truly mean that, don’t you?” I whispered. All of my fight felt drained out of me when seconds ago I felt as if I was about to explode.

“I do. I don’t care where you go, but you can’t stay here anymore. You are not my daughter anymore. I don’t know what happened to you over in that hell, but you are not Patara.”

My hands started to tremble at my sides. I bit the inside of my cheek to keep in my tears.

I don’t remember leaving the house, but somehow I ended up outside and I only woke up from my daze when I felt Dylan’s arms around me.